We continue our exploration of Isfahan, which is the most commodious of any Persian city, Olearius writes, and is just as good in winter or summer because the mountains are nearby and there is always some wind stirring, which cools the air in all the homes of the city.

Surrounding Isfahan there are nearly 1500 villages, many of them engaged in manufacturing textiles. Every province in the country produces cotton, and the fields around Isfahan are intentionally flooded when the river rises with melting snow. If not for this, Olearius writes, the region would not be habitable because of the “excessive heats which reign there.”

In winter, although it does freeze, the ice is not even as thick as a man’s finger, and it thaws as soon as the sun appears over the horizon.

The city also has many large suburbs, and the fairest of all is New Julfa, which we have seen in several previous episodes and is occupied primarily by the Armenian Christians. No Christians live within the walls of the city, but Olearius says this is because they like it that way, preferring to “settle themselves in a place, where they might live quietly and enjoy the freedom of their conscience.”

In Kasan, the air is unwholesome and the pox is common even though that city is geographically “excellently well seated.” They also have tarantulas and the most dangerous scorpions in all of Persia.

The ordinary money of Persia is of silver and copper. Gold is rare, and available only in foreign coins. Olearius describes the different minting marks, and tells us that every Persian city has its own money that is changed every year, and that such money can be spent only in the place it was minted.

Centralized government control of economies is a history of failure, and inflation ravaged the entire region of Turkey, Persia, and India beginning in the late 1500s. Arriving from Europe, it was exacerbated by the Ottoman-Safavid wars and other factors.

By 1677, French traveler Jean Chardin said, “The money itself has been altered. One no longer encounters good coins.” He also called the Indian moneylenders in Isfahan “true bloodsuckers [who] draw all the gold and silver out of the country and send it to their own."

By 1684, most of the coins remaining in circulation were seriously debased, the bazaars at Isfahan were closed, and the shah ordered new money to be minted. By 1694, the population was suffering from heavy increases in taxation, a sharp decline in wealth, and a severe lack of gold and silver coin.

Trade had been irreparably damaged. Inflation increased even further. The shah was unable to pay the army. And the famed security of Persian roads – enjoyed by our ambassadors from Holstein – disappeared as caravans were attacked even within sight of the capital.

The Safavid Empire fell in 1722.